Most people with uncomplicated pregnancies start maternity leave between one and two weeks before their due date, though the right timing depends on your physical comfort, job demands, financial situation, and whether your pregnancy is high-risk. There’s no single “correct” week to begin leave, but there are clear signals from your body, your benefits package, and your personal circumstances that can help you decide.
How Your Body Signals It’s Time
For many people, the third trimester brings increasing fatigue, back pain, difficulty sleeping, and general discomfort that makes a full workday harder to get through. These are normal parts of late pregnancy, and they’re a reasonable basis for choosing when to stop working. If you have a desk job and feel fine at 38 weeks, there’s no medical reason you can’t keep working. If you’re on your feet all day and struggling at 34 weeks, starting leave earlier makes sense.
Some symptoms go beyond normal discomfort and signal something more urgent. The CDC identifies several warning signs during pregnancy that need immediate medical attention: extreme swelling of your hands or face (not the mild puffiness most pregnant people experience, but swelling severe enough that you can’t bend your fingers or fully open your eyes), severe pain or redness in one leg or arm, belly pain that is sharp or worsening and won’t go away, and sudden overwhelming tiredness where no amount of sleep helps. These aren’t signals to “start your leave.” They’re signals to call your provider right away, because they can indicate complications like preeclampsia or blood clots.
When High-Risk Pregnancies Change the Timeline
If your pregnancy involves complications, the decision about when to stop working often gets made for you, or at least gets made much earlier. In a study of 56 women with high-risk pregnancies, only about 11% worked straight through to delivery without interruption. Nearly 29% stopped working during the second trimester, and another 39% stopped during the third trimester. None of the women who stopped in the third trimester returned to work before giving birth.
The most common reason for early work stoppage was risk of preterm labor, followed by gestational or pregestational diabetes and chronic high blood pressure. About 9% of the women in the study stopped working in the first trimester, mostly due to preterm labor risk or chronic hypertension. If your provider puts you on bed rest or activity restrictions, that typically triggers medical leave separate from your postpartum maternity leave, which can help preserve more of your bonding time after the baby arrives.
What Federal Law Actually Guarantees
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave. To qualify, you need to have worked for your employer for at least 12 months, logged at least 1,250 hours in the year before your leave starts, and work at a location where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles. Public agencies and schools are covered regardless of size, but many people working for smaller private companies don’t qualify at all.
FMLA leave is unpaid, which is the critical detail. It protects your job, not your paycheck. You can use FMLA time before your due date for prenatal appointments, pregnancy-related complications, or simply because you’re too physically uncomfortable to work. But every week you use before delivery is a week subtracted from the 12-week total, leaving less time with your baby afterward. This tradeoff is the central tension most people face when deciding when to start leave.
How Pay Works During Leave
If you have short-term disability insurance through your employer, it typically replaces 50% to 70% of your income for six to eight weeks after delivery, depending on whether you have a vaginal birth or a cesarean. Short-term disability generally only kicks in after the birth itself, so any time you take off before your due date is usually unpaid unless you use accrued vacation or sick days.
A growing number of states run their own paid family leave programs that can fill some of the gap. New York, for example, provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave at 67% of your average weekly wage, capped at about $1,177 per week in 2025. California, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon, and several other states have their own programs with varying benefit amounts and durations. Check your state’s specific program, because eligibility rules, benefit percentages, and how the leave interacts with FMLA and short-term disability all differ.
If you’re relying on a combination of short-term disability and state paid leave, map out which weeks each program covers. Some run concurrently with FMLA (meaning they overlap), while others can be stacked to extend your total paid time. Your HR department should be able to walk you through the specifics for your situation.
Strategies for Timing Your Leave
The most common approach for uncomplicated pregnancies is to work as close to your due date as possible to maximize time off after birth. Many people aim to work until 39 weeks, giving themselves a small buffer before the due date while preserving nearly all their leave for recovery and bonding. First babies frequently arrive after the due date, so some people work right up to labor and end up with extra days at home before delivery.
Starting leave one to two weeks before your due date gives you time to rest, finish preparing your home, and mentally transition. This is especially worth considering if your commute is long, your job is physically demanding, or you’re not sleeping well enough to function safely at work. The tradeoff is real but modest: one or two fewer weeks of leave after birth in exchange for arriving at labor rested rather than depleted.
If you have the flexibility, a middle-ground option is shifting to remote work or reduced hours in the final weeks rather than starting full leave. This preserves your leave balance while reducing the physical strain of commuting and long workdays. Not every job allows this, but it’s worth asking about if yours might.
Practical Steps Before You Decide
Start by getting the facts specific to your situation. Find out exactly what your employer offers: how many weeks of paid leave, whether short-term disability applies, and how your benefits interact with FMLA. Check whether your state has a paid family leave program. Then do the math on what your household can afford. Knowing that you’ll receive 60% of your salary for six weeks, followed by unpaid leave, changes the calculation compared to having 12 weeks of full pay.
Talk to your provider about your pregnancy’s trajectory. If everything is straightforward, you have more flexibility in choosing your start date. If you’re showing signs of complications, your provider may recommend stopping work earlier, which could be covered as medical leave rather than parental leave.
Finally, think about your job’s transition needs. Giving your employer and coworkers a clear plan for coverage during your absence, regardless of when you start, makes the handoff smoother and reduces the pressure to check email or answer questions while you’re on leave. Most people find that setting a tentative start date around 38 to 39 weeks, with the understanding that labor could change the plan, gives them and their workplace enough certainty to prepare.